


This Still Life

by abbykate



Series: Hide and Seek [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Peace and quiet, Something with sandals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbykate/pseuds/abbykate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John loved danger. And there was no door between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Still Life

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the scheme: Jill decided that she, abbykate, and S.J. Hartsfield should all take lines from Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" and use them as titles for drabbles. They each picked five. They will be posted as a series, in the order in which they fall in the song.

Chest up, chest down; John watched Sherlock sleep.

It was such a rare occasion and one that he’d not witnessed frequently even when it did happen.  Sherlock wasn’t usually one to fall asleep just anywhere. He usually closed his bedroom door. Not a warning necessarily – but it should have been. Or John should have interpreted it that way.

Closed door equals “Don’t do it, John. Don’t watch me sleep. Don’t worry about me and check on me and open your heart to me. Don’t listen to me and wonder what I taste like under my clothes and how my skin feels beneath yours. Don’t count my breaths and stare at my fingers and envy my pillow. Don’t do it. Save yourself. Danger danger danger.”

John loved danger. And there was no door between them.

Eight floors above the Berlin city centre, it had been a long flight. True, they could have booked two rooms (or at least two beds), but what works in Devon works in Berlin works in Baker Street and on and on and back and back throughout recorded human history.  They would have always been here. It would have always been this way.

The muted TV flickered.  Some costume drama. _Spartacus_? _Alexander_? Something with sandals.

On Sherlock’s seventy-eighth breath, John stifled a chuckle imagining them as ancient Greeks. Sherlock in his crisp white toga, a wreath of leaves threaded through the curls on the back of his head, sleeping sound after a busy day philosophizing to minds that were literally too weak to comprehend his least complicated leaps. And there was John in his blood-stained tatty armor stood by just so. Watching him.

The lover and his beloved.

Sherlock shifted, a deeper breath escaping and his hand brushing John’s leg. John folded his arms across his chest.

He could do it. He could look but not touch. He could think but not say. He could feel but not react. He could take it. It wouldn’t be the first time. He could build his life; a house full of closed doors but open windows.  Of objects and secret sentiment. Of sarcasm and lamp light. And Sherlock. And he could love that life. This life.

Danger and all.


End file.
